On 15 Jun 2007, at 17:29, David wrote:
Everything I wrote still seems very clear to me, but since there is
at least one person who thinks otherwise, I will try to make it even
clearer. T
1. First, let's imagine the most optimistic scenario. A complete
multiple undo of everything in Mathematica, at 0 cost in performance
and all developed by one of WRI's brilliant programmers outside work
hours (just out of kindness or for fun) in order to make a free gift
to all Mathematica users. Would I be against it? No way! I don't
normally refuse free gifts (in case anyone was wondering) and I am
sure I would find a good use for this sort of thing. Even if, instead
fo the above, we were offered only a multiple undo of input text
only, but also at no cost in performance or development time, I would
not have any problems with it (even though I can't remember ever
having found myself missing this feature).
2. On the other hand: even the most perfect multiple undo is
unacceptable to me if it is going to make my computer unusable. I
change my computer (I only work on Mac laptops) approximately every 3
years and I always find that near the end of this period it feels
slower than my ancient Mac Plus (which I still have). I have no
desire and can't really afford to reduce the length of this cycle.
3. As for the feature itself, I would of course like to have it under
the conditions described in point 1, but other than that I can think
of many other features I would rather have instead. I could, at this
point, start listing them, but that would really be off topic and
would require more time and space than I am willing to devote to this
issue.
Andrzej Kozlowski
>
> You asked for a quote... one of your posts is one of those that would
> seem to argue against multi-level undo because it might slow down your
> computer or the WRI developers from more important tasks. If you're
> not
> arguing against, then I don't understand why you posted to this thread
> and why you made the following statements.
>
> ---Andjez Koslowski wrote:---
>
> There are a few features that are useful to everyone, and there are
> many that are useful only to some but (unless they are made somehow
> optional), will slow down everyone, forcing people either to get new
> hardware or give up other features that they really need by having to
> stick with older versions.
> I agree that a multiple undo would occasionally be useful, but I
> certainly would not pay the price of having my computer paralyzed for
> a few minutes every time time I save. Besides, I can think of many
> other features, more directly relevant to the main purpose of
> Mathematica, that I would rather have than this one. Of course a
> simple kind of multiple undo, one that only undoes typing and not
> evaluation, might not present any problems, though it would hardly be
> worth making so much fuss about. Anything that would bring my
> computer to a halt is unacceptable to me, however nice it might be
> for people who alsways have the latest hardware. All I wanted to
> point out is that there is also this aspect to features like this one
> and I hope that WRI does not forget about it when designing new
> versions.
>
> Andrzej Kozlowski
>
> ---
>
> I will not reply to any future dissections of my posts by you.
>
>